Smartphone sales continue to rise. A report released by Gartner revealed that 51.8% of mobile phones sold in Q2 2013 were smartphones, passing sales of feature phones for the first time in history.

The Africa Report released an interview back in August with George Ferreira, the Vice President and Chief Operating Office of Samsung Electronics Africa, who indicated that demand for the Galaxy S4 was three times greater than that of S3 in Africa.”The premium smartphone is really an aspirational product for everybody. The demand that we’ve seen from the distributors, from the consumers, from the partners, from the telecos across Africa has really been phenomenal” said Ferreira.

More recently, a report released by InformaUK indicates that smartphone sales will surpass those of feature phones in Kenya by 2013. Africa currently has 61 million smartphones, 15 million of which are in South Africa.

Sources: Gartner, HumanIPO, The Africa Report

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